The present invention relates generally to spinning aperture radiometers and methods, and more particularly to spinning strip (partial) aperture imaging radiometers and methods that synthesize super-resolved scene estimates from a plurality of rotating strip aperture image measurements.
To provide high resolution images from space-based platforms, for example, conventional sensor architectures incorporate active control of large, heavy, deployable optical systems. Depending upon the mission requirements and the size of the primary mirror, the active control can range from periodic piston and tilt control of primary mirror segments to piston, tilt, figure, and alignment control of all optical elements comprising the sensor.
Full aperture systems with the same resolution as the present invention have a great deal of light gathering capability because of the relatively large aperture areas. However, to place multi-meter diameter apertures into orbit, full aperture systems competing with the present invention require: segmented optical surfaces and folded support structures, if the optical system diameters are larger than the launch vehicle's fairing; complex and potentially high bandwidth adaptive optical techniques, if thin deformable mirrors are used to save weight; and complex piston and pupil matching control, if implemented as a phased array. Therefore, the full aperture systems are relatively heavy and have relatively high technical risk and cost.
Prior art relating to and enhanced by the present invention is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,243,351 entitled "Full Aperture Image Synthesis Using Rotating Strip Aperture Image Measurements", assigned to the assignee of the present invention. The invention of U.S. Pat. No. 5,243,351 is known as the SpinAp system. The commonality between the approaches of the SpinAp system and the present invention (referred to herein as the SuperSpinAp system) arises from the use of temporally registered strip aperture measurements to synthesize an image, or estimate a scene.
Accordingly, it is an objective of the present invention to provide for spinning strip aperture imaging radiometers and methods that synthesize super-resolved scene estimates from a plurality of rotating strip aperture image measurements.